Coffee Grounds are Worm Crack!

Not sure what else to call it really – coffee grounds are crack for worms.

If you add coffee grounds into a worm farm they will go nuts for it, reducing the whole pile into luscious vermicast in no time.

Heh even better because it only does them good.

And now via the power of digital images, I bring you my earthworm drug of choice…

Plenty of fat worms, baby worms, and eggs.

One of my YouTube videos on the combination of worms and coffee.

Now look at the condition of these large, flat bodied compost worms. In this case the worms were trying to escape the compost bin on a hot day, which had just been filled with coffee grounds and some quail manure. A case of them just saying no to drugs?

24 thoughts on “Coffee Grounds are Worm Crack!”

Howdy Folks,
This is my first time here, so thank you for permitting me the privilege of reading what I perceive to be among the best blogs I’ve laid eyes on, and engaging the conversation.
Obviously, since I’m a newcomer I have yet to have time to read the entirety of this blog. So, would you mind fielding a question for me?
My wife and I only began ‘Vermicomposting’ (Cultivating Red Wigglers. Is that what you refer to it as?) We’ve been reducing all of our veggie and fruit scraps with our food processor prior to feeding the worms, and it seems to be working out quite well. However, this evening I opened the lids on my three worm bins, about 8 – 10 gallons a piece, and discovered that the castings, dirt, mulch, food scraps were all wetted. The worms are reproducing rapidly so I’m going to have to build a larger worm bin this weekend. Can anyone tell me if it’s the plastic bins which are causing the excess moisture, or is this a normal occurrence?
Thank you to anyone who can answer this question.

Howdy, and thanks for writing in. If you are adding food after putting through the food processor then it would be pretty wet to start with. Are you adding and high carbon material such as straw or newspaper? The plastic bins won’t cause that issue, but if you make sure there is a drain tap or hole somewhere to let excess moisture out, and keep it topped up with good moisture absorbing material, it should work out just fine.

Oh yes coffee grounds are definitely worm crack! Our Wild Bean cafes (NZ) give away the grounds to the public and I use all I can get, snails hate it so is great as a mulch around seedlings. Also been feeding coffee gounds to my tomatoes (grown in tyre stacks).

Only issue is getting the good stuff out. With a stack, the worms will move up leaving whole tires full of vermicast, but you need to be able to rotate them out. Maybe I’m just getting old but that is hard work! Still like your thing better.

I built this ‘continuous flow’ worm bin back in 2005 out of plywood and 2×4’s and painted it with 3 coats of paint. Part way down is a ‘false bottom. When you start the bin, you lay several sheets of newsprint over the wires. Then as the worms ‘eat’ the garbage, they go upward and the castings stay at the bottom. After a two or three months you take a rake and scrape to and back for the castings to fall below where you scrape them out. It worked well for several years before it rotted out.
I wrote a review of it back then but didn’t know it was still online until recently when my daughter-in-law told me she saw it by chance.http://www.wormdigest.org/content/view/73/2/

You know that looks a whole heap easier than what I’m doing now with the car tire worm farms. Very hard to collect the vermicast from them, and with all those coffee grounds going to feed them there is so much of it. Very interested to build what you have described… add another project to the list (OH NO say the wife)!!!